The devil is in the detail. And the snakes are in the grass. This week’s cover by Sarah Dudley and…

The Bennelong bedwetter Some say that this innovative and agile Team Turnbull government continues to go from strength to strength.…

A fortnight ago I arrived in Britain, to speak at the annual Battle of Ideas festival. Think Festival of Dangerous…

It could have all been so much easier… Whatever the deal done by the Coalition and Labor, there always was…

Tantamount to a speechcrime New York is wonderfully offensive. Offensive to nature with its gravity-defying towers. Offensive to the tragic,…

In a widely-publicised incident, two attention-seekers from the far-right Patriot Blue group harassed Senator Sam Dastyari in a Melbourne pub…

It’s a festering boil on the backside of progress, but no government will lance this offensive double of PM Keating’s…

You’d think that, with its $1 billion budget, the ABC could handle a little criticism. Not so, as Melbourne Ports…

Resolving the dichotomy between a work of art, and the artist who created it, has never been more urgent or…

There is a naive belief at the top of government that because the Tories are only a fart’s yard behind…

It’s been a miserable two weeks for our Foreign Secretary. Not only did Boris Johnson trip up over the British…

History will curse Robert Mugabe. When he took over as prime minister in the wake of the Lancaster House agreement…

Always go to a storyteller if you want a sparky answer to a question. What does Jeffrey Archer, bestselling author,…

There are many wonderful scenes in the film version of David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross, but my favourite comes…

It has long been my belief that whereas the quality of gentiles drawn to Judaism is very high (Marilyn Monroe,…

One hundred years ago this month, my great-great grandfather sat down to compose a letter which would finish a long…

There were two mascots for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. One was called Mandeville, obviously because Stoke Mandeville’s games…

After the most intensive street-by-street combat since 1945, Isis’s so-called caliphate is no more. Last weekend, the Iraqi government won…

Home As the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill faced 470 amendments in its examination by a committee of the whole House,…

Long letter from the High Mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ School, addressing me as ‘Dear Old Paulina’ (I thought we…

No. 2 iron English Heritage launched a crowdfunding campaign for repairs to Abraham Darby’s 1779 bridge at Ironbridge, Shropshire. This…

The liberal media is at the moment engaged in a campaign attacking social media on the grounds that it is…

Chairman May Sir: Theresa May is the only politician with a mandate to lead, yet doesn’t seem capable of leading…

Although we all see rather too much of the present Mr Speaker, it was a good innovation that he and…

The Budget this Wednesday represents this government’s best, and perhaps its last, chance to regain the political initiative. Ever since…

The moment the news broke on Halloween that an Uzbek in a rental truck had just killed eight people on…

Every time I write about Bitcoin you can probably take it as a major sell signal. The last time I…

Numerous readers told me they liked my recent tale — offered as an antidote to ‘media sniping at corporate capitalism’…

Daniel Swift I spent too much of this (and last) year reading anaemic updatings of Shakespeare plays: pale novels which…

If you don’t yet watch Gogglebox on Channel 4, start doing so now. Far from making you despise our couch-potato…

Fish. Slippery, mysterious creatures. They are mysterious because of where they live, in vast waters, and because they elude the…

Many moons ago, I worked at the New Musical Express magazine, which transformed me from virgin schoolgirl to the fabulous…

Apart from glorying in a memorable name, Lettice Knollys has chiefly been known for her connections — with her second…

If books about the Israeli-Arab conflict were building blocks, the Palestinians would have their own state already and then some.…

In this slim travel book Horatio Clare voyages as a guest on the Finnish icebreaker Otso (Bear), ‘mostly in darkness,…

The terroir of the Kentish coast is faultlessly represented in The Sportsman (Phaidon, £29.95), a book of recipes from an…

Grief is not being able to eat a small boiled egg. ‘Could you face an egg?’ the widowed Jean asks…

Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney was one of the surprise stand-outs of last year, and a worthy winner of the…

If you search Google Images for Ted Lewis, the results show an American jazz-age band-leader in a battered top hat,…

Tove Jansson, according to her niece’s husband, was a squirt in size and could rarely be persuaded to eat, preferring…

All photography requires light, but the light used in flash photography is unique — shocking, intrusive and abrupt. It’s quite…

Under the central dome of UCL — an indoor crossroads where hordes of students come and go on their way…

David Mamet’s plays are tough to pull off because his dialogue lacks the predictable shapeliness of traditional dramatic speech. He…

Erté was destined for the imperial navy. Failing that, the army. His father and uncle had been navy men. There…

It’s 50 years since the first local radio stations were launched by the BBC in yet another instance of the…

Any readers of the Sun who excitedly tuned in to Howards End on Sunday night with their pause button at…

Grade: D+ I was suckered in by the brio of Taylor Swift’s first big single, ‘Love Story’, despite the clunking…

A kindly cowboy, an East Coast bride, adultery, murder and madness. The Wind, Dorothy Scarborough’s 1925 Texas gothic novel (and…

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is plainly wonderful, and stars Annette Bening, who is plainly wonderful, as Gloria Grahame,…

‘There is something enviable about the utter lack of inhibition with which Leonard Bernstein carries on,’ wrote the critic of…

‘It’s all wizards and elves, right? Dungeons & Dragons stuff?’ Such is the general response when you mention larp, or…

This year sees the 450th anniversary of the birth of Claudio Monteverdi, a pioneer of opera and a crucial transitional…

What is left to say after the church shooting in the Home of the Depraved? Those killed in Texas included…

At ten to eleven we filed outside the church and assembled in the graveyard around a small cenotaph commemorating the…

The incident I am about to recount I make no judgment about, other than that I believe it tells us…

I spent last weekend glued to Bridge Base Online, watching the 16th European Champions Cup taking place in Latvia, and…

Alexander Alekhine was one of the two world champions (the other being his fellow native Russian Mikhail Botvinnik) who won,…

White to play. This position is from Alekhine-Supico, Blindfold Simultaneous, Lisbon 1941. Can you spot White’s remarkable finish, which is…

In Competition No. 3024 you were invited to submit a short story in the style of Dan Brown. This comp,…

Each of four unclued lights is the result of an action that may be described as 7 (hyphened), a definition…

Answers to clues in italics are SET IN STONE (38). Resulting entries at 1, 2, 14, 25 and 43 (in…

Crikey Moses! Stanley Johnson has been cast as the token pensioner in the new series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me…

One dietary fad that never made sense to me was the campaign against the consumption of eggs. Now call me…

Q. My husband, who used to be away on business most of the time, now works from home and has…

I have lost faith in British boyhood. In mixed schools, young males have failed to seize an opportunity that previous…

The inventor of the verse form known as the clerihew, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, had a way with this seemingly simple…